If you're a Lefty like us, the Democrats are not your friends

Frank Church, and other giants in the earth

By Owen Paine on Saturday February 18, 2006 12:40 PM

Back in '75,a Democrat-controlled Senate
set up a committee
to investigate
the darker side of the whole cold war carnival;
and this was done
with the Republicans still clinging to the White House,
after the convulsive moments of the prior summer and fall,
when the deepest, most persistent five o'clock shadow in American political
history
was finally forced
-- well, not quite finally --
from the nation's morning mirror.

A possible parallel strikes one, eh?
Maybe you're thinking
we need something of that sort again --
some congressional committee, either house or senate,
to take stock of the long war on mad turbans,
now by my count past its 30th birthday.

Now I understand the urge to dream here.
As a for-instance,
the Church investigations
-- among other attempts to clip
off some of the more hideously malformed branches of the imperial
presidency--
led to the creation
of the recently much traduced FISA court.
Dear ole Frank Church's
white hat outfit produced revelations
that all bore fruit in legislation limiting executive power
when the donks returned to the White House in' 77.

But as nice as this all seems,
try not to project it onto today's conjuncture.
The mirage of a Dem-controlled house
forming a Church-like committee is nonsense --
pure unvarnishable nonsense,
so long as the donks have a dominant core
of fearless resolutes
still committed to fighting
this terror war against the mad turbans
until... well, until when? The next Millennium, maybe.

Church and his senate posse make a bad analogy.
Those donkey guys had made a separate peace.
For them
the cold war was over
well
before they formed their committee.

In fact there is a far better possible
parallel, also from '75,
than Church and company:
the infamous Rockefeller commission,
a star chamber set up by Gerry Ford
to whitewash a generation of domestic government
crime.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Saturday February 18, 2006 12:40 PM.